Printed products frequently have to be intermediately stored and rearranged between processing stages, because often a processing stage supplies an intermediate product with a speed and a sequence not coinciding with the speed and sequence of the next processing stage. For the intermediate storage of printed products, which arrive in scale flow form and which are to be further processed as a scale flow, storage systems are known in which the scale flows are shaped into either rods or rolls and stored in this form. Storage in roll form has proved to be advantageous because the scale flow formation is retained, because for storage purposes the rolls merely have to be superimposed, because no storage aids other than the roll cores or hubs are required and because the winding and unwinding can be completely automated.
For intermediate storage and rearrangement, the scale flows provided by a processing stage are wound onto roll cores or hubs and the thus-formed rolls are stored. When needed, the rolls are removed from the store and unwound. The roll cores, which are equipped with an integrated band, are consumed in the process of winding up, pass with the roll into the store and are made available again after unwinding. Between the time that the cores are made available on unwinding and their use or re-use on winding, it is also necessary to intermediately store the empty roll cores.
European application no. 92810181.5 (published as no. 505320) describes a method for the intermediate storage and rearrangement of printed products in scale flow form in which, for optimum utilization of the storage space, both the printed product rolls and the empty roll cores are stored interchangeably. For this reason, the rolls are stored with vertical winding axes, stacked on top of each other and the roll cores are juxtaposed with parallel, vertical winding axes to form substantially circular, rosette-shaped arrangements, which arrangements have substantially the same diameters as the diameter of the usual roll. For optimum utilization of equipment and for economizing on transportation, the equipment used for carrying out the described method, i.e., for handling and transporting rolls and cores, is advantageously so designed that it can not only handle and transport single rolls and single empty cores, but can also handle either a plurality of superimposed rolls or a rosette-shaped arrangement of a plurality of empty cores.